Column: We fight for everyone's access to reproductive health care

Monday

Aug 12, 2019 at 4:15 AM

Planned Parenthood believes in ensuring all people have access to the sexual and reproductive health care services they need. We believe that everyone — regardless of income, age or marital status — has the fundamental right to decide when and whether to have children. Planned Parenthood has not politicized health care, politicians have.

In Ohio and across the nation, politicians are abusing their powers by enacting laws that take away a person’s decision-making abilities about childbearing by blocking access to selected health care services, including birth control and safe, legal abortion.

Planned Parenthood has been at the forefront of not only providing health care, but fighting for a patient’s right to access it.

In Ohio, we are familiar with this fight. In the past eight years, 22 restrictions to reproductive health care and access to abortion have become law. This includes the recently passed near-total abortion ban, which the majority of Ohio voters oppose.

Despite the constant attacks, Ohio’s Planned Parenthood health centers remain steadfast in their commitment to do what they do best: provide high-quality, comprehensive reproductive health care and sexual health education to all. Because when you’re a health care provider that more than 85,000 Ohio patients rely on to get the care that they need and deserve, that’s exactly what you do.

Politics, not a concern for public health, drove Ohio legislators to bar Planned Parenthood from funding to provide health services, including life-saving cancer screenings for uninsured women of color and pregnancy-prevention education for foster care teens.

Politics, not a concern for public health, drove Ohio legislators to deny public school teachers and parents, who gave their consent, access to medically accurate, age-appropriate sexual-health education provided by Planned Parenthood. This exclusion leaves students to learn from programs that preach abstinence-only until marriage and press young people to make virginity pledges.

Politics, not a concern for public health, drove Ohio legislators to exclude culturally competent Planned Parenthood community health care specialists from two counties having especially high black infant mortality rates: Mahoning and Trumbull. Planned Parenthood community health care specialists visit high-risk pregnant mothers between visits to their doctors and infants through the first year of life.

Politics, not concern for public health, drove the Trump-Pence administration to dictate radical changes to Title X that will dangerously undermine Planned Parenthood health centers’ ability to offer patients medically accurate, comprehensive care. Title X is the only federal program exclusively dedicated to providing low-income patients with access to family planning and plays a vital role in ensuring safe, timely, and evidence-based care is available to every individual. In Ohio, excluding Planned Parenthood from this program will put more than 63% of Title X patients at risk of losing access to critical primary and preventive services.

Medical professionals protest isolating Planned Parenthood. The American College of Gynecologists has said loud and clear: “Politicians should not be able to pick and choose among qualified providers, dictate the counseling physicians can give their patients, or undermine women’s access to evidence-based, necessary preventive services.”

I join the countless patients, medical providers and supporters who envision a world in which health care and politics are separate. Unfortunately, that is not our reality. The fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy is larger than any one individual or organization — it’s a movement. While some try to create distraction and mischaracterize our shared mission, Planned Parenthood will continue to cut through the noise and offer all people — regardless of their race, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status or how much money they have — the high-quality access to the health care and education they need to live full, prosperous lives.

Iris E. Harvey is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, which is part of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

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